The Power of Building Lean Muscle
A "slow metabolism" is often blamed for excess weight. But there is an excellent way to increase the body's ability to burn fat: build lean muscle tissue. One's metabolic rate, a measure of how many calories your body needs to function, is greatly affected by the percentage of lean body mass. The more lean muscle tissue one has, the higher one's metabolic rate.
Lean muscle tissue increases metabolism because muscle is an active tissue (as opposed to fat) and maintaining muscle requires an expenditure of caloric energy. In addition, muscle expends calories by helping the body to convert food into energy, water, and heat. Fat is more passive, acting primarily as a stored form of body energy. So when your body is deciding what to do with the food you've eaten, the more muscle tissue you have, the more calories it can send to the muscle cells to be burned. This leaves fewer calories to be stored in fat cells. The smaller the fat cells are, the less fat that can be stored in the body.
In general, men have higher metabolic rates than women because men typically have a higher proportion of muscle tissue versus fat. The same is true for younger people compared to older people. The amount of lean muscle mass in the body starts to decline around age 30 at a rate of approximately 2-5% per decade. Additionally, as people get older and become more sedentary, their caloric requirements decrease as well. So as people age, they expend fewer calories due to decreased physical activity AND burn fewer calories due to a decrease in lean muscle mass. This is partly why as our society ages, we see a greater percentage of people that are overweight.
Dieting and restricting calories can also slow down ones metabolism. When people go on a crash diet and reduce caloric intake, the body senses the caloric deficit and slows down the metabolic rate in order to conserve energy. This slowdown of metabolic rate is knows as homeostasis, when the body is in balance, healthy, and all things are normal. As your body senses calorie restriction and tries to save its fat stores, it breaks down lean muscle tissue for energy. This means that people who try to lose weight through extreme diets also rob their bodies of muscle and bone mass. This reduction in lean muscle tissue further lowers the metabolic rate and thus the vicious cycle begins – the fewer calories you take in, the fewer calories the body burns.
But lean muscle tissue loss, and the resulting metabolic slowdown, can be stopped and even reversed. Strength training exercises, A.K.A. resistance training, can help build and maintain lean muscle tissue, thus increasing the metabolism. An increase or decrease of one pound of muscle increases or decreases our metabolic rate by approximately 30-50 calories per day. Research studies have found that a 3-pound increase in muscle mass increases metabolic rate by approximately 7%. Let’s do the math: Replacing 10 pounds of fat with 10 pounds of muscle will increase ones metabolic rate by 20% AND most likely reduce ones pant size by at least 2-3 sizes. Not bad!
Cardiovascular exercise is helpful in burning calories and improving heart health, but strength training and the gaining of lean muscle tissue is the key to increasing metabolism in the long run. Cardio burns calories while your heart rate is elevated but lean muscle tissue increases your metabolic rate allowing you to burn more calories 24/7 and to look and feel great all the time.The benefits of lean muscle tissue go beyond increased metabolism. Increased bone density, increased flexibility in the tendons and ligaments, increased hormonal stability, increased longevity and vitality, reduced risk of injuries, reduced risk of illness, and more.
Talk to us how Your Daily Dose can help you with your fitness journey! Click to book a FREE consult to get started.
